Daily Dose for July 24, 2008

Primary Election Turnout Light

Primary Election Turnout Light -- Early voting for the local elections to be held in August is going very slowly according to state election officials. The August elections include primarys for state legislative races and many local county elections. Through Tuesday, 37,127 votes had been cast since early voting began Friday, election records showed. That likely puts Tennessee on pace to equal turnout numbers from the 2000 and 2004 primaries of between 500,000 and 550,000 votes. Surprisingly, through Tuesday, just 459 votes had been cast in Nashville - that's behind smaller counties. The Commercial Appeal looks at turnout in Memphis, where there are more exciting races going on - like the 7th and 9th district Congressional primaries.

VW Incentives Will Create Record -- Those closely monitoring the incentive package offered by the federal, state and local governments say the incentive package used to lure Volkswagen to TN could set a record for the most ever offered to lure an auto manufacturer. Now, the Times Free Press reports that the incentive package will top $500 million over the next 30 years. That includes $81M worth of donated property, $30M in free worker training, $43M in road construction, $3.5M in paid rail improvements, $150-350M in property tax breaks, and sales tax breaks on industrial machinery purchases and pollution control equipment. The previous record was $419.4 million offered in 2006 to recruit Kia to West Point, Ga. EDC Commissioner Matt Kisber said the incentives are just keeping pace with the times. The projected economic benefit of the plant will top $600M a year.

TNGOP Closes Statesmens to the Media -- The Knoxville News-Sentinel points out an inconsitency in the TNGOP's recent news that it will be closing its annual Statesmen's Dinner fundraiser to the media. Previously, the TNGOP had been critical of any attempts to limit press or citizen access to events sponsored by Democrats. Hobbs said the Statesmen's Dinner had been "closed ticketed event and historically has not been open to the media." However, the AP has attended the past two dinners featuring Mitt Romney and Bill Frist. The speaker this year is White House political advisor Karl Rove. Tennessee Democrats criticized the move.

Bredesen: Buy-outs Should Have Been Sweeter -- Gov. Bredesen said that the state incentive package to cut the state's payroll should have been sweeter to get more employees to buy into it. So far, with about two weeks to go before the Aug. 5 deadline, about 1,400 state employees have applied for the buyout, well short of the about 2,300 goal. Bredesen: "We could have made it richer ... If I had known what was going to happen to the economy in the future and what the impact was going to be on people’s psyches with $4 gas and those things, you might have anticipated it would take a little more to get somebody to want to leave and we might have tried to sweeten it up.”

Posted by Adam Groves | Email This |